Boobies?

A discussion of the D&D 4th Edition dragonborn race caused an unfortunate realization: the females have breasts. Female reptilians that lay eggs. If you have a female reptilian pet, I will give you a moment to go check that. Note that the bottom of a female turtle’s shell does not have cleavage. I do not know how consistent the illustrations are: fantasy setting regularly reverse the decision on whether female dwarfs have beards, and some of the images could be female dragonborn without breasts. Once the epiphany arrives, you start seeing it everywhere. See, for example, Earth Eternal. Those are some prominent breasts on frogs and birds. If you have a female avian pet, I will give you a moment to go check that.

If you have a female mammalian pet, I will give you a moment to go check that. Note the cat’s chest: fuzzy but flat. If you have seen a litter-bearing species nursing, count. Catgirls? No. Female tauren, really? Those are not udders. And for the places that put udders on all humanoid cows: that is a bull, and there are degrees of wrong going on when he is squirting things. We will not get into female-aspected rock and fire elementals that somehow exhibit sexual dimorphism.

The Everquests, I am told, are good about this. I am even willing to give pectoral credit once a few races get it right. You also lose no points if the species in question was originally a humanoid mammal (naga) or was designed to interact with humanoid mammals (succubi). I am going to stop thinking of examples before it gets stuck in my head, but you are welcome to contribute yours. Comments are open.

For the furries in the audience, yes, I know this is old territory for you. Please do not link to those discussion threads, especially ones with illustrations, especially especially ones that get into fetishes. Discussion threads from Earth Eternal and other games are acceptable. I hit TV Tropes, which led me to the dragonborn breasts discussion thread (past 500 posts). (Official word: D&D has a hand-waving explanation about how they are not really reptiles. Neither are dragons.) For anyone reading at work, I recommend waiting until you get home to click any links.

Same goes for sci-fi. It makes sense to a large extent to have gendered species other than human in sci-fi and fantasy – but yes, it does not make sense that they would have the same reproductive organs. A little creativity and more honest representation of the non-human or related mammalian spectrum would be pretty great – and make the choices more interesting, honestly.

Often one of the strongest points of speculative fiction is its ability to investigate and sympathize with “the other.” Making their social and physical interactions and structures markedly different from ours, yet still sympathetic, is always more refreshing than the same old pop-fantasy “what can we put boobs on next” mentality.

I’ve always kind of assumed that anthropomorphism adopts a variety of humanistic (or hyper-humanistic in some of these cases) features, not just standing upright or facial expressiveness.

In a game, that goes even further, beyond the furries I’d say. We have certain expectations of our genders and I’d think most players would like those expressed in human-like ways regardless of racial choice.

In other words, I don’t think too many people want to RP a cat, they just want to immerse a little in a human with cat-like features.

Why does a dragonborn only have 2 arms and 2 legs when they are presumably descended from a six limbed creature? Why wouldn’t they be hunched over with stronger arms allowing for both tool use and significantly greater upper body strength?

To make them seem “proud”, to make sure they aren’t too “alien” for people to identify with. Gender is a strange thing in humanity and modern culture has lived in deep denial of that simple fact for a very long time. Why should our fantasies create a deep and varied model of gender when we refuse to accept the depth and variations in real world gender? Why upgrade to 3D when your audience hasn’t entirely grasped the concept of one dimension?

Boobies sell. Especially to forth additions target demographic. I would bet that WotC is also trying to make things as aesthetically pleasing as possible to help facilitate the sale of their IP to game developers.